A silver halide photographic light-sensitive material (hereinafter referred to as a "light-sensitive material") employed in graphic arts is generally exposed and then processed employing an automatic processor comprising at least a development section, a fix section, a water wash section or stabilizing bath section and a drying section. Each processing solution in each processing tank of developer, fixer, washing water, stabilizer and so on is replenished depending on the amount of processed light-sensitive material, to compensate the consumed components and make up for the lowering of processing activity caused by the compounds which leach out of processed light-sensitive material and components which are brought in from the preceding processing tank. The amount of the processing solution exceeding the predetermined amount is overflowed as a waste solution.
In recent years, because of reducing environmental load, open sea disposal of photographic processing effluent has been prohibited, and lowering replenishment rate has been rapidly propelled in accordance with reduction of the load of effluent disposal. Therefore, more condensed solution kit of replenisher has been greatly demanded. On the other hand, to avoid the problem to use the condensed solution kit of replenisher, solid processing composition of a granule form or a tablet form has been also more popular.
FIG. 1 illustrates a model of a replenishment system using tablet form replenisher which is conventionally used to process black-white light-sensitive materials.
In FIG. 1, 1 represents a replenishment apparatus and 2 represents a processing tank of an automatic processor.
The adjustment of a replenisher is carried out by introducing the determined amount of water from water works into a dissolving tank 11 of the replenishment apparatus 1 and adding tablet form replenisher into a tablet inlet apparatus 12, thereafter the resultant mixture is mixed, stirred and dissolved. The replenisher adjusted in the dissolving tank 11 is introduced to a replenisher accumulating tank 13. Pump P begins to work by receiving a signal from the automatic processor which informs the processed area of light-sensitive material. The amount of replenisher in accordance with the processed area is calculated from the predetermined amount of replenisher per unit processed area (in this case, 10 ml/10.times.12 inch.sup.2 size). The replenisher is supplied to a processing tank 2 from the replenisher accumulating tank 13 through a replenisher supplying line 14, thereby with the inflow of replenisher from the replenisher accumulating tank 13, the same amount of the outflow of processing solution (tank solution) is overflowed as a waste solution.
In the processing system of silver halide color photographic light-sensitive materials, where controlling the dissolution rate of a tablet form replenisher is relatively easy, direct dissolving method of the tablet form replenisher is mostly employed, wherein the solution circulates between the processing tank and the replenishing tank at all time and the tablet is directly added to the solution in the replenishing tank, whereby in proportion to processing, by the tablet form replenisher gradually being dissolved, processing components and other active additives are supplied, and the same amount of an outflow equivalent to the amount of replenishing water supplied into processing tank is overflowed as a waste solution. Compared with the processed area of color light-sensitive materials, that of black-and-white light-sensitive materials used in X-ray photographic field and graphic arts field are much more larger, to control dissolving rate of the tablet form replenisher by similar dissolving method mentioned above is impossible so that the method as shown in FIG. 1 is employed. The dissolution rate of replenishing tablet depends on the kind of additives contained in the replenishing tablet. As the film size increases, the amount of reprenishing solution in processing one time increases, accordingly, the processing is more affected by the dissolution rate, sequentially, the fluctuation of image density of the processed light-sensitive material increases. Accordingly, in case where the film size is large, the dissolution rate must be strictly controlled, and to control the foregoing dissolution rate is very difficult.